Fiction
EARTHQUAKE. By Henry Walsworth Kinney. (Nash and Grayson. 7s. 6d.)—An ironic situation is well handled in his carefully written and somewhat unusual novel. Sage Smith is an employee of a tourist agency in San Francisco. His imagination is haunted by dreams of travel and romance, but he is held in check by Marion, his too domesticated and maternal wife. At last, however, he succeeds in taking her with him on a trip to Japan. He leaves her at Yokohama, while he explores less beaten tracks. There occurs an earth- quake, admirably described. Being told that his wife has been killed, Sage has some sentimental adventures with Japanese women. Disillusioned, he returns to San Francisco, yearning now for the dead Marion whom he had never fully appreciated. But Marion is alive, after all ; only, having imagined that Sage died during the earthquake, she has married another man. Sage is no impossible creation of fancy. With his restlessness, and his touch of weakness that leads him to the brink of folly but does not give him the courage to Plunge right in, he is a true character, well realized. The 'scenes of Japanese life are also made to live.
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